We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.
~ Carl Sagan
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We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.
~ Carl Sagan
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(Part 18 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Nothing crazy, but planning this yesterday enabled me to get this done this morning before I have to leave for the airport :) Tomorrow: Perambulation on a different continent.
My time is my only real resource. My time is finite. I’m temporarily able-bodied. I’m temporarily in control of my thoughts—and only mostly in control if I’m honest. We feel deeply touched when someone pays attention to us. This is why many people fight (figuratively and literally) for attention. The power of all the solitary experiences (books and music, meditation and personal movement, writing and all other composition, regardless of medium) is that we are free from the constraints of others’ time. With the solitary we remain entirely in control of the use of our own time.
By comparison, the consumption of stories via electronic media can leave us feeling peculiarly undernourished, dissatisfied and unfulfilled, as if we had just gulped down fast food. Despite an insatiable desire for more, we rarely feel uplifted, and it’s not often that we think about the characters for days afterwards. Storytelling is the oldest, purest and most direct form of human communication. Modern technology is no substitute for this unique compact between narrator and listener.
~ Richard Hamilton from, A story told aloud, in person, has a power like no other | Aeon Essays
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The trick (in addition to T. E. Lawrence’s “not minding it hurts”) is to be aware of when we need to surrender our control to the others’ time. Sometimes we need to be enthralled. Sometimes we need to feel touched. Sometimes we need to feel ourselves given over to the power of others. For that, the power is more so in the telling.
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…we see what we believe, not the other way around. Rarely do we see the world as it is. Most of the time we are so busy compartmentalizing, judging, and ignoring what we can’t abide that we see almost nothing. We don’t see opportunities. We fail to see pain. And most of all, we refuse to see the danger in doing nothing. If you can’t see, you will never make art successfully.
~ Seth Godin
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(Part 17 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
To and from my favorite local cafe is about 4 miles. Tomorrow: I think the exercise will be to power the human-powered lawn mower.
Often it isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the little pebble in your shoe.
~ Muhammad Ali
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(Part 16 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Oof, slow and tired this morning. Too much food this weekend o_O Tomorrow shall be a long walk to/from our town’s little cafe for lunch
Having priorities isn’t enough for me to end up sane. I’ve overcome the naive urge to line up everything into a single-file queue; That’s not how life actually works. Leaning into parallel-ism is the way. Social engagements bubble up on their own, and I lean into those whenever I can. Maintenance and administrivia need to be regimented and so I’ve process-ified everything so the important but not-urgent things get attended to. One must have the mental space—the ability to sit with one’s thoughts—to really think about life.
At the individual level, it is not enough to work on good ideas. You must only work on the best ideas. It is not enough to ask “is this good” you must also ask “is there something better?” As painful as ruthless prioritization is, it is not as painful as failing to do it.
~ Andrew Bosworth from, Half Staffed is Unstaffed
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Unfortunately, prioritization stands upon the idea that “best” or “better” have meaning. I have no interest in being particularly disciplined at anything. (Setting aside various comments people make about how much I get done.) I have no interest in doing what’s “best”. I have a moral compass I’m comfortable with, and I enjoy creating things (like great conversations).
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I tell my students, when you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.
~ Toni Morrison
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(Part 15 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Active recovery day. Oof, pebble wrestling always pays off. Tomorrow: A loop of our usual trail run.
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1100 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/44
I’ve been stumbling more over graphic depictions and graphic novels. There’s this fun book Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel which describes the storytelling secrets of the new masters of radio. I’ve read another graphic novel about finance and the visual element really brings the stories to life. (See Craig learn, sorry.) In hindsight, I don’t understand at all why this would have surprised me. I spent gobs of time reading comics like Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County in book form and they’re graphic novels if you read the entire arc in one go.
Our thoughts are a composite process. We really do think with our entire bodies.
~ Alex Pavlotski from, Habit Change and the Embodied Mind | alexpavlotski
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Pavlotski is another example. I had a wonderful conversation, Ethnography, leadership, and trajectory, with him for the Movers Mindset podcast. He is probably best-known for his work visualizing Parkour, but there’s much more to his work than just the drawing portion. This is not just a guy who does parkour, who also happens to draw kewl cartoons.
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Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
~ Miyamoto Musashi
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(Part 14 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Fun little session with just enough pebble wrestling to get a good workout. Tomorrow’s activity will be walking.
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.
~ George Orwell
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(Part 13 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Circuits of jump-rope and rail balance, two wonderfully antagonistic activities; get all wound up jumping, then try to be calm and balance. Repeat. Tomorrow: We’re heading up to the local rocks to do a little bouldering.
Trees often have my attention. I find myself thinking about the spot where a tree is standing. Whether its seed fell there, or someone planted it, that spot is it. The tree is simply going to stand there as the sun whips across the sky thousands of times. I imagine the tree turning its leaves quickly (in tree time) to catch what light it can during each flash overhead.
Intrigued by this unheard of species, Wang set out to see it for himself and to collect specimens, which he shared with colleagues. One of them was Hsen Hsu Hu. A diligent paleobotanist, he had read of Miki’s fossil discovery five years earlier. As soon as he saw the peculiar needle pattern, Hu recognized the “water fir” as a Metasequoia.
~ Maria Popova from, The Remarkable Story of the Dawn Redwood: How a Living Fossil Brought Humanity Together in the Middle of a World War – The Marginalian
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There’s a lot of interesting leaps in the story Popova shares. Across a war, across two cultures, but the vast time this tree has crossed is insane. We have fossils of this tree… and we still have the live tree. My mind boggles.
But mostly, Popova had my attention at trees.
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Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.
~ Isaac Asimov
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(Part 12 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
Glorious cool weather at the moment. Fitbit thinks our pace was a whole minute faster; not sure about that, but it did feel faster. Tomorrow: circuits of jump rope and rail balance.
I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished.
~ Djuna Barnes
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